Sharpen those pencils and clean off those keyboards, aspiring authors – it’s NaNoWriMo (or, National Novel Writing Month)!
All November long, writers all over the world will attempt to complete a novel in a month – according to the NaNoWriMo website, that’s 50,000 words.
It all started in July of 1999, when 21 friends in San Francisco got together to write their own novels – a process co-founder Chris Baty describes as, “half literary marathon and half block party.” The next year, NaNoWriMo was moved to November to provide an escape from the dull, wintery weather. They also built a website, so people from all over could get together to keep track of their word counts and encourage one another.
Since then, NaNoWriMo has exploded on the Web, with hundreds of thousands of participants signing up each year – in 2013, over 300,000 people signed up online to participate that November.
Just how long is 50,000 words? Well, the NaNoWriMo website notes that’s about the length of The Great Gatsby. Another book about that length is The Red Badge of Courage. You’d have to write 1,667 words a day from November 1 to November 30 to reach that goal. Although it sounds hard, it is possible! To get you motivated, here’s a list of over 250 NaNoWriMo novels that have been traditionally published. Scholastic has even published some NaNoWriMo participants:
- Ally Kennen, author of Berserk and Sparks (published by Scholastic UK)
- Stephanie Watson, author of Elvis & Olive: Super Detectives
Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year, OOM readers? Let us know in the comments!
Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month.
